Maybe one night I’ll be asleep and I’ll feel a hand like a dove on my cheekbone and feel her breath cool like peppermints and when I open my eyes my mom will be there like an angle, saying in the softest voice, When you are born it is like a long, long dream. Don’t try to wake up. Just go along until it is over. Don’t be afraid. You may not know it all the time but I am with you. I am with you.

In order to have bliss you have to be able to accept all the parts of the other, all the wildness and the darkness. You have to be able to hold on.

This was not a fearie tale. This was not the movies. This was life. It hurt more. It was excruciating. It was excruciatingly beautiful.

I didn't tell him that what I was most scared of, most haunted by, was something I didn't understand and could never run away from. It was myself.

He was so handsome,but he didn't look well.He reminded her of a cigarette.

I wanted to die, then. I wanted to destroy the body I was trapped in, become what she was, no matter what it took. No matter how much mutilation or pain. But he looked away, at me. He pulled my face down and pressed my lips against his like he was almost trying to suffocate us both.

We got quiet. The garden was combing her hair and putting on earrings. The house was full of dancing creatures, not male and female but both, two lovers in one body. The books downstairs were reciting their poetry to each other, rubbing together, whispering through the leather covers. Wine was flowing through the water pipes. You had caught my leaping heart in your hand like a fish.